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If your talking about the copper BB's for BB Guns, they are copper plated steel. Check 'em with a magnet. They are not suitable for your fowler unless your barrel is rated steel safe and then I would still use a plastic shot cup.
Now, if you found pure copper BB's then they should be safe to shoot and only a little heavier. Wouldn't carry the energy of lead but would be slightly better than stell. I imagine they would be expensive to shoot though.
They're not even really 'copper plated', more on the lines of "copper washed', a very very thin layer of copper over a pretty hard steel BB. I've read that the steel is harder than the steel usually used for steel shot, however I don't know whether this is correct or not.
A cautionary tale about using hard steel shot in a smoothbore. A friend was traveling in Africa and one of the locals was carrying a shotgun with odd ripples in the barrel. Turns out he had shot a load of ball bearings out of the gun and on the way out the bearings had "rifled" the barrel.
I have shot a single .060 ball bearing out of a 20 ga smoothbore with a spit patch several times with no problems. I find that I can hold dead on at about 100 yards with my standard load.
However, putting multiple steel balls down the barrel could cause them to jam up on the way out and cause serious barrel damage.
I tried some shot loads in my pedersoli bess consisting of daisy brand "bbs". It works fine, but it is very ballistically inferior to say a load of lead number 6 or 7 shot. I wouldn't try it on a squirrel unless you were 10 yards away or closer.
yes, some of the high power (350-450 fps) repeating pellet pistols use lead BB's. don't have any first hand experience with them though. For the life of me I can't remember the BB manufacturer but you could google it i'm sure.
GAMO makes them, but warns they are not for use in smoothbored guns designed for steel BB's.
Gamo makes lead BBs, but they call them "Round Pellets" (Seriously) Here
Steel BBs and lead Round Pellets for BB guns are 0.171 to 0.175 inches (.177 caliber), while lead BB shot for shotguns is 0.180 inches, and usually won't work in a BB gun.
A smooth bored BB gun will shoot anything that fits down the barrel. The problem that arises in guns like the Red Rider is feeding. When you look in the little hole on the top of the gun to see if a BB is there and ready to fire it is being held there by a magnet that assists in feeding....so the BB must be of ferris metal to stick, i.e. steel.
If you have a lead BB of the correct diameter or smaller and drop it down the barrel of a cocked BB gun it will shoot out of the barrel...don't tip it down before you shoot or it will roll out of the end of the barrel. :shake: